Dumbfounded. That was the word he best used to describe himself. The old wizard thought Khyriaxx’s breakthrough in locating the word Craetorian would make things easier in his search, but it did not.
The first days were fruitful. A smattering of uses of the words were scattered here and there, most detailing the myth and lore of ancient creatures of previous ages. But the lore was incredibly vague. They spoke of titan-like individuals the size of buildings fighting epic battles in the Forgotten Era. Monsters, really, that nearly destroyed the world. Neither Xexial, nor Khyriaxx could find anything stable that looked like it might have at one time been rooted in fact. It was too wildly fictitious. They were fables, nothing more.
Like everything else, the truth of the Craetorian was lost in the emptiness of the fifth era. A blight in their history and mar on their culture.
What truly happened five thousand winters ago that warranted the eradication of all lore and history? What could have truly been so terrible that the combined agreement of their ancestors decided it was better that one not know?
The sun rose and set day after day, as Xexial desperately searched for these answers. As he did, a grim tone of finality settled in on the veteran wizard. The time for excuses was ending. When Grind finally returned to the Onyx Tower the hunt would resume, in earnest. Any hope of finding the truth of Ashyn Rune was going to be lost to him, and soon so would the boy.
Once the scales learned nothing of use at the capital of the Dark Elves, he would come back angry and refueled to resume his campaign against the recreant. Xexial figured if they were lucky they had two days left. A week if the Maba-Heth found a false lead.
Still, it burned at Xexial. What was Ashyn Rune? What was this siphoner that was mentioned in the journal of Patrius Monerch? What were the Craetorian Purges?
He knew of only two factions who might bear the answers he desperately sought: the Enclave itself and the Seven. Both were on opposite corners of the continent, weeks, even months, away. Xexial didn’t have weeks. He had days.
He slammed the tome shut and stood up with a huff. His bones creaked and his muscles tightened in protest. He fought through it in his anger, but he was still stooped from the ordeal. He was old now. Old and feeble, and the legacy of wizards he was hoping to leave behind was going to be hunted and killed.
“Do not be abandoning hope,” Khyriaxx said without looking up from his tome. “There always be a solution.”
Xexial shook his head. “Not for this, lad. Not for this.” He said feeling ancient. “There’s nothing that can save Ashyn from being a Recreant.”
“Oh?” Khyriaxx said as he finally looked up from the tome he was diligently researching. The monocle in his right eye made it massive compared to the left. The ridiculous eye blinked once before the spriggan took off the lens. “Is there not you? Are you not his master?”
Xexial leaned heavily on the chair. “I was his master. Until he decided to declare himself rogue to the Seven.”
“The boy thought you dead,” Khyriaxx pointed out. “He had to make a choice.”
“He choose poorly,” Xexial groused.
“As do we all, sometimes…” Khyriaxx looked back at the tome. “Can you not recant the Recreant status? He be your apprentice after all.”
Xexial was about to snap back at the diminutive creature, when he stopped. “I don’t rightly know.”
“Well if you could, would you? I suppose that be the important question.”
Xexial hung his head. All the long winters of his life weighing on him like bags of sand. “I have never broken the Wizard’s Covenant. It is what binds us on our important mission. My boy, he violated that Covenant, our most sacred vow.”
“Again I be reiterating. He thought you be dead. I be sure that swayed his opinion more than a little bit. Would you not try to save the only family you had left if everything else be gone? Have you never broken a single rule, ever?”
The simplicity of the last question hit Xexial like a hammer. He pulled the seat back and dropped his weary bones back into it. “I was sent on a mission, long ago to kill my errant master.”
Khyriaxx stared up at him impassively, so Xexial continued, “It was over ten winters ago now I’d guess. Noumenon, my master, had been thought dead for several winters before that, but the Seven learned of an artifact that he created that; if in the wrong hands could prove devastating. They thought it destroyed when Noumenon died. It turned out they were wrong. It was out in Kuldarr, and it was being abused.”
“How be this your old master’s fault?” Khyriaxx queried.
Xexial shrugged, “A wizard is always held accountable for his actions. We already bear the stigma of being evil because we make the hard choices. His artifact was dangerous. It was a fool’s gesture to try to make something of its power under the guise of aid. It should have been more secured.
“The Seven feared this in fact. They feared that he had been careless and the artifact stolen. Worse they feared he might have faked his death and gone Recreant with the artifact, using it for his own malevolent devices.”
“So they sent his apprentice after him, not the Maba-Heth? Rather heartless.”
Xexial sighed, leaning back into the hard wooden chair. “I was the closest. Not to mention I knew how Noumenon worked. They wanted to make sure he was truly dead. They wanted the artifact neutralized, and the Recreant, if any, dead. They knew it was personal to me. I hunted him for weeks.”
“And was it your old master?”
Xexial shook his head; he saw Khyriaxx looked almost relieved. “It was a thief who managed to break into the Onyx Tower. A young man who made too many bad choices in life.”
“And what did you do?”
Xexial stared coldly at the spriggan. “I did what I was told. I neutralized the threat.”
The old wizard watched as the spry figure shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “And you destroyed this artifact?”
Xexial looked down at his bare hands. He flexed them slowly feeling the tightness of his joints. Age spots crept up the backs of them, like lily pads on the surface of a pond. He answered in a low voice, “Not immediately. They represented something that I lost. They filled a void of loneliness I hadn’t truly known until I held them.”
“They?” Khyriaxx asked.
Xexial took a deep breath and looked up at the spriggan, “Yes, I have, in the past, not followed the Seven’s decrees word for word, but I did it for the best of intentions.”
“And Ashyn’s intentions in saving one he loves be not good enough?” Khyriaxx challenged. “Is he not filling a void of loss?”
Xexial buried his face in his hand in frustration. “Our burden as wizards is to always look at the whole picture. It is terrible to have to choose the many, and sacrifice the few, but it must be done. Ashyn has gone against this. He has chosen the few. He has turned his back on our beliefs, our teachings, and our mission. On me.”
Xexial ran the hand over his face and through his thin hair. “In a single action he has made himself a Recreant. Any other way, there might,” he said again with emphasis, “might, have been a chance. But he sent the Seven a letter stating exactly what he was going to do. Not just one letter, but several just to make sure they got it. He condemned himself by his own hand. I can see no way of undoing this. I originally hoped if I found out more about what he really was I could find some loophole.”
“This not be sounding like a path to a solution. Your variables, they don’t add up. What does finding out what Ashyn is have to do with his choice go Recreant?”
“I have to come to terms that it has nothing to do with it. I was grasping at straws, hoping that somehow finding out what he was would answer the why he went rogue.”
“But…”
Xexial stared at him coldly. “Everything I wanted to learn about Ashyn was to answer how he saved my life. I did not think the boy a rogue. I thought he was completing his mission.”
Khyriaxx shook his head, “But you’ve been stalling Grind all this time. It was to help the boy, yes?”
Xexial nodded. “It was. There was also another reason.”
Khyriaxx cocked his head, confused. Xexial finished, “If Ashyn is capable of paying the price of feedback for another, I need to know if the reverse is true.”
Khyriaxx’s eyes went wide as he suddenly understood, “You want to make sure you can defeat him.”
“Ashyn’s chances of running will be obsolete when the Maba-Heth returns. The scales will have no choice but to enter the Shalis-Fey. No Recreant has ever escaped for long. When Grind calls upon me again, I will have to do my duty.”
Khyriaxx stood up and backed away from the table. “This whole time, I thought I be helping you to save him.”
“If there was a way, tinkerer, I would gladly consider it.”
“You must be having records on Recreants, those who have come back into the fold?”
Xexial shook his head, “Wizards do not count rogues among their numbers. We have no logs on Recreants. When they are defeated, any traces of them are abolished as well. It eliminates any chances for dissension amongst our very limited ranks.”
“So that’s it? Because you can’t find the answer you are looking for, you’re just going to kill him!” Khyriaxx yelled.
Xexial stood up with a start. His body popped in pain but he ignored it in his anger and frustration, “What can I do? He made his choice!” Xexial roared. “You think I want to kill him? He’s the closest thing to a brother I have!”
“Then fight!” Khyriaxx retorted. “Find a way! Convince the Seven that he not be Recreant!”
“How? We have nothing, spriggan. Nothing but a series of terrible choices that started with the day I rescued that boy from Bremingham. I am sorry, Khyriaxx, I am. I want the boy to live. I want him to be a wizard. But he has betrayed everything I value. If you no longer desire to help I understand. I am sure the Ferhym have left long ago, your home should be safe to you now.”
The small creature put his hands on his hips; Xexial watched the quills on his head begin to rise defensively. “I can’t believe a mighty wizard, feared and fabled, is going to give up. All because his apprentice did the obvious. He is going after his family. I think that perhaps the people are right, perhaps wizards are evil. I may no longer be with my people, but I would never betray them for making the right decision.”
Xexial growled, “He is not making the right decision, he is being selfish!”
“And you are not?” the spriggan barked with surprising authority. “You would rather condemn a boy you raised, than stand up to the Maba-Heth? To the Seven? That sounds more like a coward to me!”
“How dare you!”
“No, how dare you!” the spriggan yelled. “I nursed you to health because you served a purpose.”
“Inadvertently,” Xexial said disbelievingly.
“Still, I did it because it be the right thing to do! You must find in your heart what be the right thing to do and you know it! I say, we go find Ashyn, his sister, and see if he be this siphoner. If he be, we have a new problem to deal with. One the Seven not be seeing before, no? That be fair! No immediate executions. What if sister be siphoner too, no?”
Xexial shook his head, “You have absolutely no idea what you are asking. You could die in those woods!”
The spriggan’s erect quills drooped as his eyes turned soft. “I be fearing many things Xexial, I do not deny this. I am no fighter. I not be having skill with any type of weapon. I just tinker.
“I fear pain. I fear death. More than that, I fear people. That is why I be hiding in the shadow of the Onyx Tower for all these winters. Being around people frightens me.”
“Then why even suggest going into the Shalis-Fey?” The flabbergasted wizard responded.
“I would rather die facing my fears, than live my life with the knowledge that I did not try to see if there could be another way.”
Xexial opened his mouth to reply, ready to throw a flippant remark the spriggan’s way, but no words escaped his lips.
“He didn’t make the selfish choice Xexial, he made the logical one. I think you be knowing that.”
Xexial didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Instead, he did the only thing he could. He walked away. The wizard needed time to think, and he needed to think alone.
Khyriaxx made no obvious move to follow him. Xexial glanced back once to see the spriggan sitting back down amongst the tomes to continue researching all he could on Craetorians. Xexial turned around, walked to the doorway, and stepped through. He would go where he always did when he needed guidance.
~ ~ ~
Everything in the Onyx tower was black, except for a single door deep in the cellars. This door was solid white. A relief was carved within of a man hatching out of an egg. The detail was exquisite. It was almost as if he were staring at something real. He could see the muscular definition of the naked man, the lines and creases of his well-developed frame. A flock of curls adorned his head and made up his beard. But that wasn’t what drew him in. It was the eyes. So detailed, so real, these eyes looked into the very depths of his being as if reading his soul like an open book. It was as if this carved man knew what Xexial was thinking. And in a way, he did.
Xexial knew the door only opened to those that it found a connection to magic with. While the essence of life flowed through every being, the door only opened for those who could touch that ethereal essence..
It was a bizarre trait. A unique spell placed upon the door that no known creationist knew how to replicate today. Another lost prize of their history due to the ignorance that was the Forgotten Era.
It should have been Xexial’s first flag that Ashyn was more than a half-elf. His injury had broken the bridge that tied him to magic. He was severed from harnessing it. The door should have identified that, and like those who had no knowledge of connecting to magic, he should have been denied entrance. But the door opened. It found a reason. Xexial should have known then and there.
He placed his hand upon the ivory door. It was smooth and hard beneath his touch, but not cool like stone or marble. It was warm and dry.
Dragonbone. Xexial had long known that a dragon’s bones kept its magic within them when they died, and that a skilled practitioner could use that magic to create anything from magical arms and armor to magical doors. This door, though, was beyond any still living person’s capacity.
Suddenly the door rumbled beneath the touch of his skin. Normally Xexial would feel his flesh grow warm, then hot. A deep thrumming would fill his ears, vibrating so hard that his chest would shake and his teeth would chatter. None of this happened.
Cautiously he drew his hand away from the ivory portal. He was worried. He did this same thing often before. The tremors should be coursing through his body, but they were not.
Often the pulsations continued down to his very core. In the past he felt the liquids in his body rushing to the surface of his skin, flushing him with an internal heat that was as hot as fire. That was when it would read the magic. Find his capacity and his skill and evaluate his worth.
Was he no longer worthy? Just as quickly as it started the shuddering door subsided. Steam rose around him in the corridor. The trial was complete. But was he worthy?
The door in front of him slid open into a recess in the wall, with little sound. He found it more than a little odd. Did Ashyn do something to the door as well? Were his progenitors still safe? One look within answered his question. As usual the sight before him brought with it a new rush of emotion.
Within the doorway was a portico overlooking a great gallery below. Xexial stepped through. He took two ivory steps downward to the balustrades that would stop him from falling over thirty feet to the floor below. The curved supports were made of the same beautiful crème-colored marble as the steps he took, yet they beheld a myriad of iridescent blue-laced symbols that flowed flawlessly up and around the thick railing and supporting balusters.
The gallery was circular in shape, a gentle reminder that he was still in a tower after all. Above him was a ceiling that rested like an apse. A fresco was painted across the ceiling. Thousands of men in battle against every known color of dragon. It was a battle in the Forgotten Era, or before.
Many minutes passed before he pulled his gaze away from the massive war depiction. The sight of it always pulled him to wonder what that age may was like? Was it as dark as everyone painted it out to be? Or was there life to it? A vibrancy of magic and lore, a renaissance lost to the ages? Some things survived, the statues, a few towers, all of them beautiful.
The old wizard looked below. There, thirty feet down, were twenty-three great statues of men, all facing one another. Twelve were in poses that suggested they were casting great spells. Ten were posed in silent contemplation, palms pressed firmly together at the center of their chest. Each man was robed in traditional wizard fashion, though the style seemed to change minutely from one man to the next. They all bore beards and long hair, except for the last one. The final statue at stood at the center of the circle, the northern point.
This statue was unlike the rest. The man stood in full battle regalia. An intricately-carved breastplate that bore runes of protection and warding. It made Xexial chuckle briefly. He forced Ashyn to read the runes dozens of times in manuscripts and tomes.
Across the center of this breastplate was a great dragon taking flight, its wings spread from collarbone to collarbone and its great bony tail trailing down the stomach and wrapping along the left side towards its back. Even from his vantage, he could see the minute details that made it a majesty of the artwork.
Gauntlets covered the hands of the statue. They were adorned with runic symbols, much like his armor, and held a large gem-like object on the back of each hand. Underneath that armor were layered robes, just like any of the other twenty-two statues around him.
That was not the only way in which het stood him apart. His head was bald, and he had a short-cropped beard that hugged his cheeks and chin. Nothing like the long, gangly beards he was used to seeing on the other statues, or with many of the Seven that he spoke with in the past. Above the carving of facial hair there were deep etches in the marble that was the man’s flesh. Xexial knew they were tattoos.
The tattoos covered over his eyes and nose, and ran across his bald pate, his ears, and down the back of his head and neck. They were savage and barbaric, swirls and contoured marks that cut across his face, miring his visage in gouged lines. They made him look primal and fierce.
Xexial slowly descended the steps to the floor below. Each step felt heavier than the one prior did. He thought back to the last time he was here. How he watched his struggling apprentince who was lost in thought. When Ashyn was weighing the difficult decision that eventuaklly led him into becoming a Recreant. The irony of the fact that it was this room that helped bring about Ashyn’s final decision to turn on Xexial was not lost on him. Here he was now weighing if he should do the same against the Maba-Heth and the Seven to save the boy.
Xexial stood before the twenty-three statues, his thoughts delving deeply into everything that led to this point in his life. Were the Seven worth killing for? Was the wizard’s covenant? If he stood up against the Maba-Heth, he would be labeling himself as well. He didn’t doubt that he could dispatch the Maba-Heth, but then what? They would only send another, and then another, until they came to personally deal with the problem.
Xexial wasn’t nearly arrogant enough to think he could stand to the combined power of the Seven. But what did that say about him? Was he ready to let Grind kill Ashyn? His apprentice, his friend, his adopted brother?
Xexial paced around the circle of wizards. His thoughts didn’t get any easier. There was no clear choice. He looked up at the center statue clad in armor. The old wizard approached this bald, tattooed statue. He felt reverence to the deceased of this tomb. These were his peers. Progenitors of the craft that he so loved. Carefully, he ran his worn, pale fingertips over the placard at the pedestal by the statue’s sandaled feet. Xexial read it aloud. “Magelord Rheynnaus Craëgolshien, Bastard of Ashyreus, First of his name, and last born heir of Mysticarus.”
Heir of Mysticarus. Xexial wished he knew more about the man. He always wished it every time he came to seek guidance. He only knew what his master, Noumenon, told him. That there were no details on Rheynnaus, only beliefs. Belief that it was he who constructed the Onyx Tower. Belief that his life was full of pain and strife. Belief that he was tested day after day, winter after winter, on what it meant to be a wizard, what it meant to do what was right.
Noumenon told him when he was a younger man that Rheynnaus never once surrendered to defeat. He never gave up. He endured all the horrors that were thrown at him, and judging by what Xexial saw in the Onyx Tower he was certain those horrors were many.
Rheynnaus represented hope and strong will to wizards in questioning times. He wasn’t a god, not by any stretch, and Xexial knew that was what made him relatable. He was a wizard, a Magelord of wizards, who made the difficult choices.
Today, Rheynnaus offered no insights. Today, he did not give Xexial the supernal clarity that he hoped. Today, Rheynnaus was merely a statue, and Xexial was forced to make the most difficult choice of his life on his own.
His fingers slid from the placard on the pedestal toward the smooth marble sandal. He was momentarily startled when the placard buckled slightly as his fingers broke its threshold.
He stared. He never touched it before now. It was the first time. He hoped he hadn’t damaged it in his musings. He reached out to make sure the brass placard that survived millennia wasn’t broken. As his fingers grazed the metal it creaked and wobbled slightly again.
Xexial was curious now, so bent over to look at the seam of metal against marble. He placed the side of his face on the pedestal next to the placard and pushed lightly again. Ever so minutely the bottom of the placard jetted out a small gust of dust from beneath it.
It was hollow underneath!
Xexial never knew it existed, and Noumenon never mentioned such a thing. He searched the brass more diligently now. Growing excited. How did he miss this his entire life?
In moments he found a cleverly concealed hasp. He lifted it and the whole placard popped upwards and swung away on a hidden hinge. Beneath it sat a small alcove, and inside a parcel wrapped in oilskin and covered in no less than a century of dust.
He reached in to the small alcove and immediately he felt the pressure of a ward against his bare skin. He pulled his hand back for a moment and studied the small cubby that held this bizarre treasure.
Xexial was a master of wards, and he knew with enough time he could probably find his way around this one, but time wasn’t much of an option. Slowly he took his fingers to the edge of the ward once more. As he pushed he felt a slight pang of electricity shoot up his arm. He knew the ward then; it was the very same that he placed on the front entrance of the Onyx Tower many winters before.
It was a Rend Ward. Should anyone attempt to pass the threshold that wasn’t allowed, they would receive a jolt of energy that they would not soon forget. Should one be persistent and attempt to force their way through, they would find the result to be quite fatal. Attempting to go through would be like trying to push through water, and if one was persistent, they would be rewarded by having the flesh rent from their bones.
Xexial however knew a way around this very problem. All it required was a piece of the creator. Or what the creator likely had in their possession at the time of the ward’s creation. He looked back up at the gauntlet covered hands of the statue.
“I will only borrow this,” he promised the statue.
Xexial reached up to the marble hand and wrapped his fingers around the gem-inlaid gauntlets. Slowly, but firmly, he pulled down. In moments he felt the marble give way and the gauntlet slid off the statue’s hand. As it broke the threshold of the white marble, the runic symbols of the gauntlets shimmered, and then color filled in the white voids.
Soon Xexial was holding a leather gauntlet in his hand. The runic symbols glittered and the large gem on the back of the gauntlet swirled and swayed with a cloud-like radiant crimson energy within it. Noumenon had shown him the gloves when he had graduated to the Second Circle of wizardry. It was a secret entrusted only to him, and eventually he was going to give the knowledge to Ashyn.
As the enchantment faded away and the gauntlet resumed its natural suede hue, he slipped it onto his hand. Like many forms of enchanted apparel, it formed to his hand.
Looking at the gauntlet against his hand, it made him keenly realize the loss of his gloves. Gloves he was the caretaker of for a long time. “One more loose end.”
He stuck his hand back into the alcove, and as he knew they would, his fingers passed through as if pushing into the rolling wave of the ocean. There was a slight thrumming, and he felt a faint vibration in his forearm and then he was there! Gingerly, he removed the alien package for he was uncertain as to how old the item might truly be. He unfolded the corners of the oilskin and gasped in shock. It was a tome. It was not much larger than the palm of his hand, and no thicker than the tip of his smallest finger. He wiped the dust off his hand onto his robes and then carefully opened the leather binding of the ancient manuscript.
He was surprised to find the words on the inside to be written in the same hand as he learned his spell-craft. It was a written language unique to wizards, Hacroá. It was created so that strangers could never decipher their magic and use the arts of destruction. It it was only for spells, or so Xexial had thought.
As he read the words on the first page, he realized that at one point this language was used for more than spells. As he translated the words, he swooned. He was wrong. Rheynnaus did give him insight, more clarity than he ever gave the surly wizard in the past. Written across the page it said simply, I am Magelord Rheynnaus Craëgolshien. Bastard of Ashyreus, First of his name, and last born heir of Mysticarus.
Last living Craetorian wizard.